Apple Pay “has caught the eye of EU antitrust investigators, who have asked payment companies for feedback on the service,” regulatory risk specialist MLex reports... More
The European Banking Authority (EBA) has issued a new Opinion that provides the European payments industry with an EU-wide additional 15 months to comply with strong customer authentication (SCA) requirements for online ecommerce transactions... More
Samsung’s NFC phone-based contactless payments acceptance service is now live in Canada and is to be introduced globally “starting in 2020”, the company has announced... More
A new deal between Google and Cubic Transportation Systems is set to make it possible for public transport users in a number of major cities around the world to use Google Pay to add their transit card to their NFC mobile phone... More
Rail passengers are now choosing to use ‘smart tickets’ for half of all the journeys they make, the UK’s Rail Delivery Group (RTG) has revealed, paving the way for the introduction of a wide array of innovative new fare structures... More
Public transportation operators from across the US state of Ohio have gone live with EZfare, a new service that lets passengers use a single mobile ticketing app to buy tickets and passes from any of the participating operators... More
Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe and Mercado Pago have followed PayPal in pulling out of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project. The moves mean that PayU is now the only payments company to still be listed as a founding member of the Libra Association. More
The UK’s Royal Mint has unveiled a payment card that is produced entirely from 18-karat gold and comes with “no spending limit”... More
Madrid public transportation operator EMT has announced plans to run two next-generation transportation payments pilots... More
A major investigation into US consumers’ attitudes to mobile payments has found that concerns over how well they would be protected against loss should an issue arise is now the major barrier to widespread adoption of the technology... More
The introduction of the Japanese government’s Cashless Japan initiative, which provides consumers with cashback incentives when they use a card or mobile phone to make a purchase, has led to a significant upswing in mobile payments adoption, according to reports from a number of merchants and mobile payments providers... More
PARTNER NEWS: Raiffeisen Bank has launched an Android NFC mobile payments service in Romania and the Czech Republic that uses Antelop Solutions’ digital payments and tokenization platform... More
Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority is to introduce a mobile version of its Nol transit card next year, enabling both tourists and local residents to use their NFC phones to travel on metro, tram, bus and maritime public transportation services... More
The UK’s NatWest bank has begun a three-month pilot of a biometric credit card that enables customers to make contactless transactions of up to £100 (US$123) instead of the usual maximum value of £30 (US$37)... More
The number of passengers able to use the NFC transit ticketing system which went live in Paris in September is to be increased in 2020-21 with the addition of support for host card emulation (HCE)... More
Samsung Pay users in the US are now able to send international money transfers from within the mobile payments app — and use a new Samsung Pay Cash account to make payments in stores and online “right from the Samsung Pay app”... More
Face-scanning metro check-in and payment launched in central China — Xinhua — “Zhengzhou Metro in central China’s Henan Province has ushered in the face-scanning era, as a new check-in and payment system based on facial recognition was launched on Friday… It is the first face-scanning metro check-in and payment system in the country launched along a full metro line, providing passengers with a better experience of quick pass access and automatic ticket buying.”
There are now more than 200 million users of the UnionPay mobile payments app, the China-based payments network reports, and more than 3m merchants outside mainland China now accept UnionPay mobile payments... More
In depth: The fight for dominance in China’s mobile payment market — Caixin Global — “Under the plan, by the end of 2021 all merchants will be able to use one universal barcode to facilitate transactions through different payment service providers, including banks, Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay. Currently, payment providers issue different barcodes that can be used only on their own services.”
Amazon is in talks to bring its cashierless Go technology to airports and movie theaters — CNBC — “Amazon is in talks to bring the cashierless technology that runs its Go stores to other retailers like airport shops and movie theatres, according to people familiar with the matter… The idea is to start installing the technology working for customers in the first quarter of 2020 and have hundreds of these stores working by the end of 2020, two of the people said. One person said Amazon hopes to have the upgrade process take just two weeks.”
